1
No car, not even such a one as Lady Tarlyon’s, can reach Paris from the
south within a day, or even within two days without particular
preparation; and besides, it is a chilly kind of nuisance to motor at
night over some of the worst roads known to man--especially when one can
stay so very comfortably at that ancient hostelry of modern comforts,
the Hôtel des Cardinaux, just within the blond ramparts of Avignon, as
you enter Avignon through the village of Villeneuve-les-Avignon and
across the broad sweep of the Rhone. The Hôtel des Cardinaux, four
square and stout sides enclosing what the hasty traveller may remember
as a labyrinth of courtyards--in which loiter the queenly ilex-trees and
upon which seems to open every window in the place, a multitude of
small-paned windows--is also blond, a seared and dirty blond reminiscent
of a century when fine ladies did not mind a little dirt so only their
lovers were laced and perfumed. In fact, the only thing in Avignon that
seems not to be of that dirty and delightful blond is the crucifix on
the hill which rises above the centre of that ancient town--that gray
symbol of a great idea, which even the vast and glowing Castle of the
Popes cannot mortify. Stare one way--if you can find any altitude from
which to stare, for this is a stuffy and enclosed town, a town of
crooked side-streets and cramped movements, a town of bustling
_commerçants_--stare one way, and you will see this crucifix upon its
hill; stare another, over the crenellated ramparts that now look so
amazingly useless, and you will see the broad sweep of the Rhone over
which you blissfully hurried into Avignon; and when you have looked at
the Rhone for a few minutes, you will say that it looks a hard and
heartless river, a river of steel. The land of Provence is green and
light in spring, but the Rhone beside Avignon is always of steel, and
the reflection of the sun upon its smooth waters is but an illusion to
placate the romantic stranger. And over it the mistral hurls itself at
you as you stand, say, at your open bedroom window at the Hôtel des
Cardinaux, so that you cry, “My God, I thought it was warm in Provence!”
and you close the window very quickly, and you draw up a chair to the
ugly fireplace in which a fire is struggling smokily with the mistral in
the chimney. And you say gloomily to yourself that Avignon is not a
place in which to be happy in this century: in some past century, maybe
Mr. George Moore’s century, but not in this. For, though you are in the
land of lovers and troubadours, your thoughts are not of romance:
certainly not until you have dined.
Ivor and Virginia dined in a private sitting-room upstairs. Obsequiously
was the door opened for them upon a dark and cumbersome room with high
walls of faded red damask: and so long deprived of youth and light that,
as the light crept in with Ivor and Virginia, the mirrors stirred
sleepily with reflections of ancient candelabras and musty golden
patches of Empire luxury on the background of red damask. They dined
almost in silence: very companionably, but almost in silence.
The day seemed to have tired Virginia, as well it might; and, excusing
her silences, she complained, ever so little, of a pain. It baffled
Virginia to describe this pain but as a sick little pain, something
between a tummy-ache and an ear-ache, and very disturbing in its
frequent comings and goings. And she mocked her pain, saying it was a
busy little pain--and very mysterious too, or else French and English
doctors had been very unintelligent about it. And to deal with it
Virginia always carried about with her some clear, white-looking stuff
in a little bottle--“it’s got opium and mint in it,” she said--and she
would take a drop or two of this in a thimbleful of water, and it would
presently soothe away the sick little pain inside her. And sometimes she
would make her friends try a little of the stuff in which there was
opium and mint, just to see what it was like, and they generally said it
was pretty foul. That is what Ivor sympathetically said to-night, as
they sat after dinner in two frightfully uncomfortable arm-chairs in
front of the smoky fire. There they sat and talked of nothing in
particular, nothing personal. And, quite soon, Virginia said she was
tired and wouldn’t mind going to bed; and Ivor said he was also tired,
and yawned a splendid yawn to prove it.
They had to walk across the corridor from the sitting-room to their
bedrooms, two doors side by side. Virginia let herself into her room;
and swiftly she stretched out her hand and took his, and smiled very
sweetly at him.
“Good-night, dear,” she said.
2
Once in his room Ivor found he was indeed tired. And when he was tired
his mutilated shoulder hurt him: it often hurt him devilishly, but he
was almost getting used to it. It tired one a good deal more, he
thought, to be driven in a car a long distance than to drive one. He
would ask Virginia to let him drive to-morrow, he had driven quite a lot
with his one arm, and after all there was young David Harley, who drove
splendidly with only one arm and a wooden leg. Then he stopped and
stared at something, quite intently; and as he stared at it he was very
still, scarcely breathing. Of course, he had seen it before, while he
was dressing for dinner, but he had only seen it out of the corner of
his eyes; he hadn’t touched it, he hadn’t the faintest idea if it was
bolted or not.... Then, suddenly, he felt very weary in mind and body;
quickly undressed, and went to bed. It was a wide, low, and very
comfortable bed, with no antique nonsense about it. His shoulder hurt
like hell.
3
Ivor slept, and had a dream. He dreamed of golden hair falling about his
face and body, creepers of golden hair entwining him. And then a strange
turn happened, strange even in a dream about golden hair, for he was
made to see his mind as a column of marble. And a very tall and shapely
column it looked, too! standing on nothing, directed nowhither, just an
Attic column looking very beautiful with the rare beauty of an
indestructible thing. That column was his mind, in the dream. And he
looked at it for a long time, he was made to examine it very carefully.
“Look, look!” someone seemed to keep on crying in his ear, rather
impatiently, Ivor thought. And then at last he saw what he was intended
to see--there it was, oh so high up on the column! There it was, a naked
creature, a woman, a slight and naked thing, and so dazzling white! She
held on there in a marvellous abandon of fulfilment, white arms and legs
deliciously entwining the column, golden hair wanton about her
shoulders, and lips destroying the marble column with kisses. Ivor
stared at it for a long time, a very long time, and as he stared the
column seemed to come nearer and nearer to him, until he could hear what
the golden woman was whispering as her lips destroyed the column. But
although he could distinctly hear what she was whispering, his mind
couldn’t form what he heard into words, simply couldn’t; and he
miserably racked his brain about it, thinking that it was very important
indeed for him to form her whisperings into words. And when at last he
opened his eyes to the dark room he could still hear the whispering, but
now he could form what the whispering voice was saying; it was saying:
“Oh, Ivor! dear Ivor....” And she wasn’t kissing a silly marble column
at all, that golden woman, she was kissing his lips, and her hair was
falling about his face, tickling just a little. Oh, she wasn’t real, of
course! she was only a legend, a legend of a night in Avignon! And,
stretching out his hand, he touched her body lying across the bed, and
her body under the very thin nightdress was icy cold to his hand.
“You’ll catch a most awful cold,” he murmured to the amazing lips.
“You are so vain, so vain, ...” she whispered.